A North East children’s unit becomes first in the country to win a CAMHeleon award.
CAMHeleon is an organisation which provides resources and celebrates best practice of Child and Adolescent Mental Health wards, offering positive experiences for young people whilst they are in hospital.
The award was presented to Ferndene, a children and young people’s unit which is part of Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust, a provider of mental health and disability services.
Led by Andy Davidson, Clinical Lead Nurse, at Ferndene, the team used CAMHeleon’s colourful ideas format to create a benchmarking tool full of ideas and suggestions which can be adopted to improve and enrich the experiences of young people.
The resource allows services to record and measure themselves against a set of criteria of good practice which can also act as a springboard so that services can develop their own ideas.
It is great that all the hard work by the whole team and young people has been recognised. All five wards across Ferndene have piloted the tool and evaluated the benchmarking sheet
Andy DavidsonClinical Lead Nurse
The award places Ferndene at the forefront of the national initiative after creating a new child friendly version of Star Wards, a project of the social justice charity Bright, which provides practical ideas and inspiring examples from and for staff working in mental health.